Castaways and Other Strangers
by selkie
Summary: Highlander/X-men movie universe story. After Logan and Jean Grey are captured by the Friends of Humanity...


So what you have here is the result of a bit of mental playing around after hearing that Peter Wingfield (Methos on Highlander) got himself cast as a presumed bad guy for the next X-Men movie.  
  
Castaways and Other Strangers  
  
The world, vibrated, and Logan struggled awake to what felt like a moderately strong earthquake. Instinct took over before he even opened his eyes. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to bash his head on cold metal. Arms reached out, only to encounter more of the same metal. He opened his eyes for an instant and glanced through the bars confining him just long enough to see the interior of a small cargo plane.  
  
"I saw him twitch. We better sedate him again." At the sound of the voices, he shifted back into what he thought was the position he had awoken in, the better to assess his situation.  
  
"You can if you want. If he's awake and playing possum, then whoever sticks his hand in the cage is likely to come up missing at least a hand, if not an entire arm."   
  
"But just to be safe."  
  
"If you want to go ahead. But our instructions only were to keep the girl from regaining consciousness, and him in his cozy adamantium coffin until we get home."  
  
"Lousy academic punks with no guts. Don't know why they ever let you into the Friends of Humanity anyways, Pierson."  
  
"That's your problem. I just prefer to think of it as a finely tuned survival instinct. I don't go jumping into the crocodile exhibit at the zoo either. Some dangerous things, you just need to leave alone as little as possible."  
  
Logan carefully cracked his eyes slightly open. His coffin, as the voice called Pierson had described it, seemed to be a metal lattice, presumably of adamantium. He lay in in in the middle of the cramped space, feet facing the plane's tail. From the reflections off his coffin, he could see the two men, one redheaded, the other pale with dark hair, in seated near the cockpit door, their clothing obviously unifroms but lacking insignias, rifles put in racks at the bulkhead.  
  
"When we get back, I'm going to report you." Red snapped.  
  
"Your choice." Dark hair shrugged. "In the meantime, I'm going to just sit back and pretend I'm on the Concorde instead of stuck with you." Dark hair crossed his arms over his chest, apparently considering the conversation complete. The plane engines picked that moment to start sounding a little bit off kilter.  
  
Logan carefully looked to his right, and saw only airplane hull. Then he peered left, and what he saw made him nearly try to rip himself out of his coffin and at the two guards, whether escape was possible or not. His Jeanie, laying unmoving in her own carefully padded coffin-like box. He caught himself starting to growl, but quashed the impulse. He inhaled carefully, smelling the mix of oil and unwashed guard and Jean's sweat. She was alive at least. There was a difference between their captors suspecting he was awake, and knowing he was, and he figured he would need every possible edge to get him and Jeanie out of this mess. He began to slowly contract and relax his muscles, working out any cramps.  
  
Just as he got to his left hamstring, the plane shook harder, and the sound of the engine changed from off kilter to decidedly wrong.  
  
"Pierson, Hardy strap down back there. We've got problems." What Logan assumed was the pilot's yelled back into the cabin. He heard his jailers scramble to fasten seatbelts as the pilot slammed the plane into a steep dive. Logan gripped at the adamantium lattice to stabilize himself. A worried quick glance to the left showed him that unlike him, Jean had been strapped into place. The angle of the dive began to level out.  
  
"We're not going to make it to base. There's an island close in, I'm going to try to land, engine or not." The engine still sputtered omniously, the pilot trying to carefully nurse the plane back to earth. For a few minutes, the pilot seemed to win the struggle then the engine sputtered again.  
  
"Brace for impact!" Logan tightened his grip and watched the other men try to do the same. Not that it was likely to do any of them any good. In a split second, the plane hit the ground hard. Logan's head flew against the bars from the momentum of it all, and he crashed back into unconsciuosness.  
  
************************************  
  
He came to again, this time to the smell of ocean water. He twisted his head back to see two dead looking guards still strapped to their seats and a hole in the side of the plane, sunlight streaming into the gap. Time to get out of here. In a few seconds, he found the lock to his cage, and using one of his claws as a pick, had himself free and standing in the remains of the plane. He next went to Jean's coffin, expecting the worse.  
  
Instead, he was treated to the wonderful sight of her chest still rising and falling. He reached inside and gingerly slid a finger to her neck, and was rewarded with a strong pulse. At that moment, he let go of the breath he hadn't known he was holding, and on the next inhale, caught a hint of jet fuel in the air.  
  
"Okay, Jeanie. I don't know how badly you're hurt, but I'm going to have to get you out of here." He reluctantly stepped away from her and looked around the plane. Stepping out of the plane through the hole, he quickly scavenged a long flat chunk of what had been wing. He brought it back inside, and carefully slid it underneath Jean's still form.  
  
"Can't have you turning into another Chuck now." Using the improvised backboard, he carefully carried Jean out of the plane wreckage and out of what he considered any sort of blast range. Seventy yards out, he set her down on the rocky beach and examined the small island: beach quickly fading into vegetation highlighted by a handful of coconut palms, and a few hills. No signs of human civilization anywhere. As he bent over to check Jean's vitals again, she started to wake up.  
  
"Scott, what kind of dream was that?" She started to struggle up, but Logan gently held her down.   
  
"One Eye's not here right now, and it ain't a dream." He said. "Now how are you feeling?"  
  
"Like I got run over by a semi truck."  
  
"Pretty close. It was a plane crash. Can you wiggle your toes for me?"  
  
"Moving my feet now, and then arms, and then will you let me sit up?"  
  
"Smart ass telepaths reading my mind on what's next."  
  
"As they said in Fargo, you betcha." The humor was shaky, but the strength was coming back into Jean's voice. "Doesn't feel like anything's broken."   
  
"Just want to be sure. None of the people who grabbed us made it off the plane alive." He helped her sit up. "You okay for a minute? I want to see what I can scavenge from the crash."  
  
He had made it back to the wreckage when the adrenaline wore off, and he suddenly realized how much he really hurt. His healing factor may have kept him from dying in the crash, but he still felt every bump, bruise and cracked, but now healing broken bone. "Gotta keep going." He mumbled as he eased his way back into the plane through the hole in the fusilage. There did not seem to be as much spilled fuel as he had expected. Maybe the pilot had managed to dump most of it before the crash. Still, there could be enough left to be dangerous.   
  
Quickly assessing the main cabin, Logan grabbed the guns of his former jailers. After swinging a weapon over each shoulder, he looked into the cockpit just long enough to see that anything resembling radio equipment had taken the brunt of the impact, and was therefore as dead as the crumpled pilot. Stepping his was through the debris, he extended a claw and finished opening a cracked crate. Paydirt. Or more accurately, fifty cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. The Friends of Humanity must have been combining the prisoner transport with a supply run to wherever they had their hidden base or lab. He worked his way through the rest of the cargo, selecting the stew and a crate of boxed milk to take back to Jean first. Then he heard the other person's gasp for breath.  
  
"Jean?" He quickly set the crates down and turned. The gasps turned into a bout of coughing. "What the hell?" The dead man called Pierson was doubled over in his seat, fumbling for the seat belt release.   
  
"You were dead, Bub." In two steps, Logan made it to the man's side, grabbed the man by the throat, and lifted him skyward.  
  
"I got better?" The voice was tentative. "It's a miracle then."  
  
"No miracle. You're just another mutant scum like me."   
  
"I can't be. The Friends test for the x-factor before they let you join, and the test came back negative." Pierson gasped. Logan eased his hold on the man ever so slightly so he could breathe better.  
  
"How else can you explain it? You had no pulse."  
  
"It has to be a miracle. Has to be." Pierson's reaction to the crash did not seen quite right, but Logan realized that this was not the place to figure out what was off.  
  
"Whether it was a miracle or not, what you are now is my prisoner." Logan let the claws extend on one hand as he shifted his shoulders to emphasize the rifles slung arcoss muscles.  
  
"Okay. What am I supposed to do about it?"  
  
" In front of me, and carry these." He handed Pierson the stew and milk. "Out of the plane and along the beach." Pierson scrambled through the wreckage. As he followed Pierson out, Logan checked for a pulse on the red haired guard, but did not find one.   
  
**************************************************  
  
Jean Grey sat on the beach, carefully stretching forward to touch her toes. She assumed she had been drugged with something nasty in the course of her abduction. It was the best way she could explain the painful cramps she seemed to have through most of her body. Elbows hit the beach, and she started to flex her ankles for a ten count.  
  
"Red, we've got company." She looked to see the strange man carrying a set of wooden boxes followed by the newly armed Logan. "Set 'em down here. The Friends were nice enough to have a couple of boxes of dinner on the plane."  
  
"Okay. Mind if I sit? I'm feeling a bit wobbly now." The man unloaded himself and plunked down on the shell-covered beach before Logan could respond.  
  
"Yeah, make yourself at home. Jean, this fellow's named Pierson. He was one of the people who kidnapped us, was dead, then he got better." Logan took up a guard's position at the improvised campsite.  
  
"Adam Pierson." The pale man with dark hair sighed. "Don't suppose you'll buy that it was only a flesh wound." Playing with a sea shell in one hand, he looked to Jean. There was something off about the man's actions. Most rabid anti-mutant activists would have been in screaming hysterics if they'd shown signs of rapid healing. But Pierson acted like whatever had happened on the plane was unfortunate but not uncommon.  
  
"I say he's a mutant, he says they tested for it, and he was normal."  
  
"I've even got paperwork to prove I'm X-factor free." With a quick flick of his wrist, he sent the shell toward the water. Jean reached out to catch Pierson's hand. The ethics of reading minds without permission were trumped by the necessities of a dangerous and hostile locale. Carefully, she sent out a mental probe.   
  
She caught a brief glimpse of a thousand colors of dancing light. Blue swirled with purple, greens with reds all against a shining yellow canvas. An instant later, a tendril of the light struck out at her, pushing her out of Pierson's mind back into her own gasping form.  
  
"Who the hell are you? What are you? You definitely aren't a normal human." Logan's posture shifted, the rifle moved to cover Pierson more thoroughly.  
  
"Just someone trying to survive through the years. I'm nobody important anymore."  
  
"Not good enough of an explanation, Bub. Keep talking." Logan said.  
  
"Since you've got the gun, I guess I have to. My oddity is that I'm nearly immortal. And no I couldn't tell you how old I am. No calendars back then, and I was never one of the priestly types who could calculate anything based on the placement of the stars."  
  
"X-factor or not, I'd call you a mutant then." Jean said.  
  
"All of humanity has adapted in strange ways over the years. I'm just one of the more interesting evolutionary dead ends. The first seer I met came years ago in an era that's now known mostly by legend and myth. Witches, water dowsers, prophets, saints and minor gods through the centuries, there were never many of them like there mutants now and most have not been nearly as powerful, but they have always been there."   
  
"With all you know and have seen, and you'd still join the Friends of Humanity. Some strange self loathing you've got going on, Adam Pierson."  
  
"Not self loathing, it's self-preservation. All I want out of life these days is a nice apartment by the river, and time to spend with good friends in interesting surroundings. If I'm lucky, maybe another wife. Last thing I want to do is get sucked into saving the world again. But sometimes, you just can't avoid it."  
  
"Saving the world's a pretty big claim, Bub."  
  
"Last thing I want to do is get press about it, but been there, done that, still have the comemerative beer mug somewhere back in my flat. And it wasn't my idea, but I got dragged into a situation where I didn't have many choices."  
  
"And now you're choosing to save the world from the big bad muties?" The sarcasm ran thick in Logan's voice.  
  
"I don't much care for the Friends. Lots of them are still kicking over every rock along the seashore hoping to turn up Hitler living in retirement in Argentina. But they've got their uses. Absolute power may not corrupt absolutely, but it's a damn tempting goal if you've got the might, and being god and supreme ruler is a lot more fun than the alternatives.  
  
Back in the day, a group could ride in, conquer and rule a village, maybe if they were lucky or good enough, they got to be ruler of a city-state with a couple of dependant villages. So the barbarians would come in for a couple of years, then too many women started dying in childbirth, or the drought took out a year's crops, and the people would band together and drive the conqueror back out because of all the bad signs from the gods. The witches and priests, the ones that had the talents that would later be associated with x-factors, they had maybe a tenth of the power that you have, Ms. Grey.  
  
But people change and the world's a different smaller place. Now instead of just conquering a village, or a city-state or a nation or two, you've got people who want to come along and bloody well conquer the world. And they're powerful enough to go it too. Magneto nearly pulled it off. The incident in Paris last year with Mystique, Toad, and the nerve gas in the Metro killed more than 8,000 people, and it was a miracle more didn't die. The children out there are playing with toys they don't understand, and I believe the prognosis looks grimmer than it did when Kennedy's advisors were telling him to nuke Cuba."  
  
"So the answer is to just go out and round up everyone who might be different and at the least make them register. At worst, they end up in camps like the ones rumored in China." Jean said. "Pretty harsh policy."  
  
"If it has to be that way for a generation or two until someone figures out a truly effective way of controling the Magnetos of the world, then that's the price that has to be paid. Sometimes, you've just got to look at the cold equations and work with some people you truly despise to reach a long term goal. I just happen to be rather fond of the current version of civilization and have no desire to watch the mutants and the normals get into a conflict that, as the saying goes, results in bombing the world back to the stone age. It would probably take at least five hundred years for the survivors to get the technology to redevelop the jacuzzi tub for one.  
  
Not that I could go back to the Friends now. Too many questions about surviving the plane crash, and enough time spent with the lovely Ms. Grey that they'll assume she did nasty things to my mind. But it's probably time to move on anyway. Adam Pierson's getting old." Adam sighed and slowly shifted in place, drawing a look from Logan.  
  
"Poor you."  
  
"Unfinished projects are both irritating, and have the bad tendency to revive themselves and come back to haunt you when you least want to deal with them. And as long as I had a place with them, I had a chance of influencing their policies, make sure some hidden things stay hidden."  
  
"Like your existence." Logan said. "Other people like you out there?" he guessed. A brief something flickered by Adam's eyes, but he was silent. "There are others like you, how come we've never heard of you?"  
  
"We're good at keeping that part of our lives out of the eyes of mortals, even made it an art form. A couple hundred years of witch hunts will do that to you, and being burned at the stake is a genuinely painful affair. We do our own thing, play our own games, and occasionally try for power but for the most part don't offer the threat to the mortals your kind does. "   
  
"For the most part?" Jean said.  
  
"I like to think the worst of them have either mellowed over time, or have lost their heads when they've gone too far in one of their plans. We do police our own, and plenty of overgrown Scottish Boy Scouts who will gladly try to take down the worst of them."  
  
"So what makes you think you're the only ones to police your own kind?" Jean said. Her aches from the crash started to vanish in a cloud of anger. "To be the only one who could have walked away and let them ravage society, but instead chose to stand your ground and make it safe for the homo sapiens who will never know the truth of what you have done. To face real death for the sake of the people who would gladly spit on your face or worse if you walked passed them on a sidewalk and they knew who you were?  
  
You said the mutants weren't anything terribly special under the sun. Maybe your kind and what you try to do aren't either. Maybe there are people like Logan and I who have spent a good part of our lives and will likely die trying to police our own. And just maybe you should let us do our damn jobs. You aren't the only one who can claim to have saved the world a time or two and kept it from hitting the front page of the New York Times."  
  
"So when we get off the island, you can have my commerative beer mug. I have nothing against you or Logan here, and I do appreciate what your group did to stop the incident at the Statue of Liberty. But I made the decision I felt I had to. There are things I could have done with the Friends to turn them into something a little different, tone down the hysteria in some areas and target the anger at the Magnetos of this world. It was a rather good plan." Adam sighed.  
  
"You thought you were going to change the Freinds into something benevolent?" Logan had to surpress a laugh.  
  
"Why not? It's not that hard to figure out how to herd the sheep into the direction you want them to go. I've done it before in other sorts of groups that were a hell of a lot more intelligent and sophisticated. No reason why it wouldn't have worked again."  
  
"Other groups? What other groups?" Logan said.  
  
"Sorry. Too many stories tied up with those other groups that are not mine to tell or even really talk about much. Besides, if we are stuck here for too long, I don't want to have to set right all the campfire myths and legends before we even finish off the first case of Spam."  
  
"Speaking of stuck here, any ideas on how to get away from here gentlemen?"  
  
"The idea of going back to civilization does have its merits. I'm a bit old to be playing Robinson Crusoe." Adam seemed to seize on the idea.  
  
"Okay, any ideas of where we are then? Adam or whatever your name really is." Logan said. Getting off the island did sound like the best option.  
  
"South Pacific. I never got more than a glance at the charts, not cleared for it and all, but I'd guess somewhere around the Solomon Islands or Vanatu. Wherever it is, it didn't seem big enough from what I saw of it coming in to support and human habitation. And it's a small enough island that if there were people here, they would have seen the plane go down, and have sent a group out that would have found us by now."  
  
"So we're talking uninhabited. But uninhabited doesn't mean no one's ever passed through. Most of these places have been tagged somehow by the outside world." As he felt the muscles finish repairing themselves, he suddenly felt the need to go Do Something. "Jeanie, you up to a bit of a hike? I want to see what's here."  
  
"A bit wobby, but I've been worse. Stretching the legs might be a good thing." And it would give her a bit of time to think about the strange case of Adam Pierson. She rose, and Logan waved the rifle at Adam.  
  
"Then let's go for a walk. Head along the beach, dead boy."   
  
"Might as well." Adam shrugged as stood. "You know you don't have to keep waiving that thing at me. I'd give you my parole."  
  
"Sorry Bub. I've been around long enough to learn to not trust anyone."  
  
"I can understand that."   
  
Barely a half hour into their hike, they found the mark of civilization. More precisely, on a rise near the beach, they found an automated weather station and reporting beacon, the logo for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in faded paint on one side.  
  
"Now what?" Jean said.  
  
"I assume that we break it and hope someone comes out to fix it." Adam said.  
  
"Exactly." Logan said. "Move aside there, dead boy." Adam obliged, and Logan neatly put half the rifle clip into the station.  
  
"Wonder how long this is going to take." Adam said.  
  
"Hopefully not long. In the mean time, you're going to help Jean and me drag supplies and set up camp here."  
  
"I guess I don't have anything better to do."   
  
"Well you could always tell us more about your life. I'm sure you've got some fascinating stories."  
  
"Brief summary: some good times, some bad times, some thing I've done that I'm proud of, some things I've done that I'm decidedly not proud of. Forty two great loves in my life, including my most recent wife who died far too young of cancer. Many more lesser loves. Lots of different hobbies over the years. The long story, you're not going to get from me because I'm sick of telling it."  
  
It was the last that Adam said of his past, and no amount of prodding from Jean or Logan could get him to speak more of it in the three days it took for the Bureau of Meteorology float plane it took to show up to check on the off-line weather station. They mumbled a few lies to the pilot and meteorologist about the crash and soon found themselves on the small plane headed back to civilivation, which in this case turned out to the immigration office at Honiara Airport in the Solomon Islands. Officials of various sorts scuttled around the room offering the former castaways food and drink, and calls were made to the nearest US Embassy so the passportless travelers could make their way home.   
  
After what seemed like countless hours and countless bueraucrats, the three people who were not quite ordinary humans found themselves alone in a small airport lounge.   
  
"I still think your kind are too dangerous." Adam said.  
  
"There are many dangerous people out there in the world. Some mutants, some not. But there mutants who violently disagree with what Magneto is trying to do, and do their best to try to stop them. Unfortunately, sometimes like in Paris, we fail." Jean said.  
  
"You could hear the float plane coming in for a long time. If I was in your place it would have been tempting to shoot me, and leave me stranded there after I recovered."  
  
"It was a thought." Logan said.  
  
"Maybe I was wrong, and the mutants can police figure out how to police themselves before they make everything go poof. I hope for all of our sake that you can figure out some sort of balance between the mutants and everyone else." Adam reached inside the pocket of his tattered pants and pulled out a business card. "Giving this to you, the idiot Scot with his ideas of social responsibility must be rubbing off on me." As Logan took the card, Adam quickly darted out of the airport lounge. A moment later, Jean and Logan followed him out the door, but saw only an empty corridor.  
  
"He can't have gotten far. It won't be hard to follow him." Jean said.  
  
"Don't think he wants to be followed right now, but I think he's saying he doesn't mind being found later on." Logan turned over the business card and read it.  
  
Shakespeare and Company  
Fine English Literature  
27 Rue de Vinmount  
Paris, France  
  
"So I do get the impression that we will be seeing him again." Jean said.  
  
"I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, Jeanie." 


End file.
